Hunterdon County Couple Unveils New Business Model for Importing Mexican Pottery, Glass, Copper, and Jewelry

Share Article

Tom Travers and Sharon Gonzalez-Travers, owners of Talaverica.com have recently unveiled their new ecommerce site to the community. What makes the site unusual is its ‘dual portal’; a new design based on their growing need to expand their online site.

Amado Cuff, 950 Silver Hand cut and polished

Lebanon Township, NJ (PRWEB)November 29, 2011

Tom Travers and Sharon Gonzalez-Travers, owners of Talaverica.com have recently unveiled their new ecommerce site to the community. What makes the site unusual is its ‘dual portal’; a new design based on their growing need to expand their online site. While on line sales have grown slowly, Home Party Sales, which began as an experimental aside, have grown rapidly. The new site, along with a beautiful retail landing portal, features a consultant portal as well. Tom and Sharon are seeking consultants to begin working with Talaverica in the spring of 2012.

Their life as entrepreneurs started with Tom’s post-9/11 trip to Spain. In the spring of 2002, Tom, a Captain in the Yonkers fire department, N.Y., set out to run with the bulls in Pamplona with a group of fellow firefighters. When he returned home, he began researching bull runs and learned it was a common practice throughout the Spanish-speaking world. When he saw that San Miguel de Allende would soon be having its own run of the bulls, he set out for Mexico.

When Tom and Sharon (a former public school teacher) met a few years later, he wanted to introduce her to the magical city that he’d discovered four hours north of Mexico City (never mind that several thousand Americans already lived in San Miguel de Allende). They were married in 2007, in a ceremony in an old hacienda in Dolores Hidalgo, a nearby city of 55,000 known primarily for its ceramics industry. Tom’s family came from New York, Sharon’s from her native England. The wedding guests went home laden with platters, bowls, and trays, all made by hand in Dolores Hidalgo and nearby villages. The seeds were sown for their future business.

Since then Tom and Sharon have made many return trips to the 500-year-old towns of colonial Mexico—a part of the country, they said, that most Americans overlook. Last summer they visited Taxco, about 100 miles southwest of Mexico City, and marveled at the abundance of local silversmiths.

“There’s more to Mexico than beaches,” Tom said. “The Spaniards built these cities all over the place 500 years ago. You go into these towns and villages, one village will be a silver-making village. You go down the street to another village and they’re all making copper. Another village might be making furniture.”

Today Tom and Sharon sell most of their goods over the Internet, aided by a new web site (talaverica.com) touting “treasures from colonial Mexico.” The Talavera pottery—plates, bowls, and mugs—are lead-free and dishwasher- and microwave-safe. The copper pieces, made by a family with generations of expertise, are individually hand-hammered from 100 percent recycled copper.